Baby leave plan for grandparents

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WORKING grandparents will have the right to take up to a year of
unpaid leave to help care for their grandchildren under industrial
relations policies announced by the Coalition.

In a bid to claw back support from families anxious about Work
Choices, the Minister for Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey,
announced several measures yesterday, including the new concept of
grandparental leave.

Under the policy all grandparents would be entitled to a week
off work without pay to help parents care for a newborn baby. The
right to take the leave would not require approval from the
employer.

Grandparents at firms with more than 100 employees would also be
entitled to take up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave to help raise their
grandchildren. The employer would be required to keep the
employee's job open.

Workplace legislation currently provides 52 weeks of unpaid
parental leave for one parent or for both parents to share in the
first year of a child's life. There are no similar legislated leave
entitlements for grandparents.

The new policy would expand the pool of carers in a family who
could take leave in the first year of a child's life, from both
parents to the parents and all the grandparents.

Mr Hockey said the initiative recognised the special role of
being a grandparent and the changing workforce.

Employers including St George Bank have offered such leave under
workplace agreements in recent months to help retain older
workers.

Labor's industrial relations spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, said
the policy was not worth the paper it was written on given the
Government's record on industrial relations.

"This quickly cobbled together pre-election document does
nothing to fix Work Choices and does nothing for Australian working
families suffering under these extreme laws," she said.

"If the Howard Government is re-elected then the policy
announced today will be tossed aside and Work Choices will be made
even more extreme by prime minister Costello."

The ACTU president, Sharan Burrow, said the changes were "too
little, too late from a government that has spent the last 11 years
stripping away rights from workers and introducing unfair
industrial relations laws that hurt working families".

Employer groups responded cautiously. The Australian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry said plans to retain Work Choices were
welcome but the new leave entitlements were less welcome.

The chamber's chief executive, Peter Hendy, said it "has long
maintained the best way to support balancing working and family
life is encouraging open discussion and agreement between employers
and employees, not adding new rules to our national
legislation".

Employer groups have resisted the extension of unpaid leave
because of the cost of replacing a worker on leave and having to
keep their job open.

The National Seniors organisation backed the measure, saying it
would give people in their late 50s and 60s more scope to stay in
the workforce.

The Coalition also said under its policy building union
officials seeking to enter workplaces would have to advise the
Australian Building and Construction Commissioner as well as the
employer, and union officials who had their right-of-entry permits
revoked would be disqualified from holding office in their
unions.